Saturday, April 30, 2016

You have to say this much for Donald Trump: no aspirant for
political office in America has created so much interest in distant New
Zealand.

In fact you’d probably have to go as far back as 1964, to the
contest between Lyndon Johnson and his arch-conservative Republican rival Barry
Goldwater, to find a US presidential election that aroused more interest worldwide.
Trump can take credit for that, if nothing else.

The difference with 1964, of course, is that he isn’t even
the candidate yet. The Republican convention that will choose the party’s
nominee is still three months away, but already Trump is the subject of
conversation around the water coolers (or would be, if our workplaces had water
coolers).

New Zealanders have watched the rise and rise of Trump with fascinated
loathing and horrified disbelief. Distaste for him cuts across the usual
political boundaries.

A recent UMR poll found that 82 per cent of National Party
voters would back Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over Trump. Even if it
came down to a choice between Trump and Clinton’s “socialist” rival Bernie
Sanders, National voters would support Sanders by a margin of 76 to 13 per
cent.

New Zealanders can’t understand why so many Americans seem
to love an uncouth sideshow barker. It tends to reinforce the common perception
that all Americans are crass and ignorant. But America wouldn’t be the world’s
strongest economic power, and the pacesetter in every field from technology
through to art and entertainment, if it were populated by idiots.

We tend to forget that voting in the presidential primaries
involves a relatively small number of people, and that Trump’s backing comes from
a disillusioned faction within that minority. Far more Americans dislike him
than like him.

A better picture of his standing among Americans generally
is provided by an NBC-WSJ poll earlier this month that showed only 24 per cent
of respondents gave him a positive rating compared with 65 per cent who saw him
in a negative light.

So Americans don’t want Trump. They don’t want Clinton
either, judging by the same poll which gave her a 56 per cent negative rating. Only
32 per cent liked her.

That leaves us with a puzzling question: how can a country
so rich in human capital deliver such a dispiriting set of candidates for the
most powerful office in the world?

You have to wonder whether we’re witnessing a failure of
democracy. It’s not working the way it’s supposed to.

Trump and Clinton are polar opposites politically, but in
their own way, each represents a democratic malfunction.

Clinton is the consummate political insider – a cold,
calculating, slippery, artful schmoozer. Polls show that Americans don’t trust
her, and neither should they. She can barely shut her closet door for all the skeletons
rattling around inside.

Trump, on the other hand, makes a virtue of being an outsider.
He feeds off a deep and widespread sense of alienation.

By posing as a man of the people, which he demonstrably is
not, he has harnessed resentment of the political elite. Unfortunately, not
being part of the political establishment doesn’t, by itself, give him
presidential credentials.

And what of the other contenders? There’s Sanders, whose pitiful
ignorance on crucial policy issues was shockingly exposed in a recent newspaper
interview. And then there’s Ted Cruz, a repugnant Texan fundamentalist who
manages, against the odds, to be even less attractive than Trump.

How has it come to this? How could American voters be faced
with a choice between candidates so few of them want?

And what happened to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and John F Kennedy? All articulated noble visions for their
country, even if their personal lives – especially in the case of the alley-cat
JFK – didn’t always bear close scrutiny. But we’ve heard little in this
presidential campaign that has been either noble or visionary.

Democracy seems to be on its knees in Australia, too, where
the brazenly opportunistic Malcolm Turnbull seized power last year from a
wounded Tony Abbott and is now floundering in the polls himself, raising the
prospect of yet more political convulsions in a country that’s starting to make
Italy look like a model of stability.

There are common factors here. Democracy, supposedly the
property of the people, has been hijacked. Power now resides with elites, factions,
spin merchants, wealthy donors, lobbyists and politically partisan media
outlets.

It hasn’t happened here, at least not on the same scale –
but that’s not to say it won’t.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Yesterday, with my daughter and two grandsons, I walked the
recently opened Paekakariki Escarpment Track, aka the Stairway to Heaven – the 10-kilometre
walkway linking Paekakariki and Pukerua Bay, north of Wellington. It’s described
as one of the highlights of the Te Araroa Trail, the 3000km network of tracks
stretching from Cape Reinga to Bluff.

The Escarpment Track had been in the news only days before when a
62-year-old man, walking it on Anzac Day, collapsed and died. Although police
said at the time that they weren’t sure whether his death was the result of a medical event or a
fall, a follow-up report today gave the clear impression he suffered a heart
attack.

Either is certainly possible. The Te Araroa website
describes the track as steep, narrow and exposed, all of which is true. It
rises from near sea level to 220 metres and there are 492 steps. Some of the stepped
sections are very steep and it’s not hard to imagine someone stumbling or
tripping, in which case they could fall a very long way. There are no handrails and the website
suggests you shouldn’t attempt the walk if you suffer from vertigo. An additional
complication is that apart from the high point of the track, which is
accessible across farmland by 4WD vehicle, there’s nowhere for rescue teams or a
helicopter to quickly reach anyone in trouble.

People shouldn’t be deterred by publicity about the death, but
they should take heed of the warnings. Judging by a couple of the walkers we
saw yesterday, some people tackle the track not realising how challenging it
is. It’s not a casual stroll and it’s certainly not practical for dogs,
although the website makes no mention of them.

But it is a
spectacular walk, and I’d like to do it again in better weather. Yesterday,
unfortunately, was overcast and cool, with a cold, blustery wind. On a still, sunny
day the views would be sensational.

The website suggests you allow 3-4 hours. We did it in slightly
less than three without rushing. Paradoxically, we would have taken longer had
the weather been better, because we would have spent more time enjoying the
views while we ate lunch.

I’m pleased to say the grandsons, aged 10 and 7, did it
uncomplainingly and probably had more gas left in the tank at the end than I
did. As we approached the finish in Pukerua Bay the younger of the two startled
his mother by bursting into Deep in the
Heart of Texas, which I put down to a recent stay at our place during which
they enjoyed a DVD of The Muppet Show
featuring Roy Rogers. Teaching them appreciation of the outdoors is one thing,
but you have to ensure their cultural needs are met as well.

Friday, April 22, 2016

The American economist Milton Friedman once said that it’s a
great mistake to judge things by their intentions rather than by their results.

Unfortunately it’s a mistake repeatedly made by
agenda-driven reformers on a mission to create the perfect society.A Radio New Zealand Spectrum
programme brought one such instance to public attention earlier this month.

Until 2007, intellectually disabled people in New Zealand
were exempted from minimum wage laws. This meant they could be employed doing
menial work in facilities known as sheltered workshops.

It was a system whereby thousands of New Zealanders who were
incapable of holding down proper jobs were nonetheless able to occupy
themselves each day doing simple, repetitive work.

They were paid only a token sum, but the money wasn’t
important. What really mattered was the companionship they enjoyed in the
workplace and the satisfaction they got from having a job to go to each day.

It was an arrangement long supported by the IHC (originally
the Intellectually Handicapped Children’s Society) and by parents with
working-age disabled children. The IHC was itself the country’s biggest
operator of sheltered workshops.

Then ideology intervened. Disability became politicised.

Sheltered workshops may have admirably met the needs of
those working in them, but reformers looked at them and saw only
exploitation and discrimination.

Where others saw contented workplaces, left-wing activists
saw a vulnerable minority being deprived of their rights. Sue Bradford, then a
Green MP, called it “systemic oppression”.

Pumped up with reformist zeal, the Labour government in 2007
repealed the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act, which since 1960 had
allowed disabled workers to be employed for less than the minimum wage.

A system was adopted whereby everyone working in sheltered
workshops was individually assessed to see whether they were capable of mainstream
employment at normal pay rates. Those who were judged incapable were given a
continuing exemption from the minimum wage law.

The IHC applauded. It too had been ideologically captured.
Over opposition from many of its bewildered members, the IHC seized the
opportunity to shut down 76 workshops and “business units”.

In Blenheim, locals were so appalled by IHC’s plan to sell a
nursery and plant centre which employed intellectually disabled workers that a
community trust was set up to buy the business and keep it going.

Part of the problem was that the IHC itself had changed
radically. Originally an organisation run largely by parents and volunteers, it had
evolved into a government-funded Wellington bureaucracy led by
disability-sector careerists.

The reforms had predictable consequences. True,
a minority of the more “able” disabled found paying work. But the closure of
those sheltered workshops deprived hundreds of intellectually disabled people
of the satisfaction of going to work each and enjoying the camaraderie of
others.

Despite extravagant promises, no satisfactory form of
alternative activity was found for most of those tipped out of work.

Where previously they had delivered firewood, done ironing,
mowed lawns, made letterboxes, worked in garden centres and sorted goods for
recycling, they now watched TV, sat idly in “day bases” or went for walks. This
was euphemistically called community participation.

In many cases, denied constructive work, their behaviour
deteriorated. Some became difficult to manage.

Parents and caregivers were left bitter and disenchanted.
Many felt betrayed by the IHC, the very organisation they looked to for
support.

Of course none of this directly affected the well-paid
ideologues, politicians and bureaucrats in Wellington, who were safely
insulated from the consequences of their policies.

Now it seems the reformers aren’t satisfied with the damage
already done in the name of bogus “inclusiveness”. As Spectrum reported, the exemption permits issued to more than 800
disabled workers nationwide are now under threat of cancellation.

This is presumably Phase II of the project commenced in 2007
– the final solution, if you like.

Let’s give the reformers the benefit of the doubt and assume
they want to create an ideal world in which no one is disadvantaged.

The problem is, they’re willing to make people suffer for it
to happen.

Spectrum focussed
on Southland Disability Enterprises in Invercargill, one of a small number of
independent sheltered workshop operators that continued to function after IHC
abandoned the field.

The 80 disabled people working at SDE were all issued with
exemption permits, but now the government wants to cancel those permits. If
that happens, SDE will cease to be viable and the people who happily work there
will be out of jobs. This is madness.

The Wellington bureaucrat driving the change explained that
exempting disabled people from the minimum wage law was “out of step with
modern thinking”.

She went on to pronounce that people with disabilities
mustn’t be treated differently from others. Problem is, they are different. Or perhaps she hasn’t
noticed.

And what’s being offered in return? Nothing at all, if you
unpicked the bureaucrat’s vague and non-committal reference to possible subsidies,
employment supports and training schemes.

I was reminded of the far-fetched promises made in 2007,
when the reformers cruelly misled intellectually disabled people with
phantasmic visions of the fulfilling new life that awaited them.

I wonder what National’s Invercargill MP Sarah Dowie (no, I
hadn’t heard of her either) is doing to save the jobs of the SDE workers. This
is her government, after all. Or do politicians find it too hard to resist
agenda-driven public servants? If that’s the case, we’re in deep trouble.

I started this column with a quotation, so I’ll finish with
another one – this time from the great Christian writer C S Lewis, who
memorably said: “Of
all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be
the most oppressive.”

Saturday, April 16, 2016

You get spoiled living in a small (well, smallish) town like
mine. For instance, you expect to find a parking place right outside the place
you’re going to.

I have also come to assume that I can turn up at the local
movie theatre only minutes before the film starts and not worry about finding a
good seat. On one occasion there was just me and the projectionist.

Two Sundays back, though, an unimaginable thing happened. I
turned up five minutes before screening time and the theatre foyer was jammed
with people.

There was a queue ahead of me, and when I got to the counter
I heard words I never thought I’d hear in the Regent 3: “We’re sold out. Do you
want to come back another time?”

I reeled out on to the street, numb with shock. My vision
was blurred and my breath came in convulsive gasps. I self-diagnosed
post-traumatic stress disorder.

But we’re a resilient lot out here in the provinces, so I
tried again the following Thursday night. Same film.

There were only four people ahead of me at the box office.
Things were looking good. But when I walked into the actual cinema – phwoah!
The place was packed.

I had to go right down the front. Then more people arrived,
and we all had to move over and squeeze up to make room.

You’ve probably guessed by now that the film was Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

Taika Waititi’s latest film has created a real buzz. It’s a
crowd-pleaser in the tradition of Geoff Murphy’s Goodbye Pork Pie, and like Murphy’s film it’s unmistakeably and unapologetically
a New Zealand movie.

It’s also, like Goodbye
Pork Pie and Sam Neill’s first film, Sleeping
Dogs, a bit rough and ready, which kind of adds to its charm.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it looks as if Waititi made
the film up as he went along, but he certainly didn’t bother to smooth off the
rough edges.

The opening scene, for example, shows a police car speeding
along a remote gravel road and splashing through puddles. But when it pulls up
at its destination, it’s sparkling clean.

Film crews are supposed to include a continuity person to
ensure consistency between scenes, but the pristine police car was either
missed or ignored.

Audiences might also have observed that the two dogs that
accompany the Sam Neill character, Hec, and his young companion Ricky appear in
some scenes but are inexplicably absent from others.

Then there are the sudden striking changes of scenery. I
don’t know of anywhere in New Zealand where you can step straight from dense, sub-tropical
rain forest onto a barren, Desert Road-type alpine landscape, but they do it in
Wilderpeople.

It took me back to the embarrassingly bad 1964 New Zealand
film Runaway, in which the action
abruptly shifted from the coastal sand dunes of Northland to the Southern Alps,
as if only a short drive separated them. Even as a 14-year-old, I cringed.

But Runaway
purported to be a serious film. Wilderpeople
can be excused because it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a lot
of fun.

Part of the humour comes from the affectionate nods to other
New Zealand movies – among them Goodbye
Pork Pie, but also Smash Palace.

Waititi (who plays a wicked cameo as a deranged church
minister) even managed to include a tribute to the famous Crumpy and Scotty
Toyota Hilux TV ads. Lloyd Scott himself appears briefly as a startled tourist
whose photo-taking is rudely interrupted by a rampaging 4WD.

There’s no doubt Waititi is a freakish talent, but we already
knew that from Boy and What We Do in the Shadows.

Boy was misleadingly
labelled as a comedy but was really a sad film with comic moments. Wilderpeople is the reverse – a comedy
with some laugh-out-loud scenes and one or two sombre interludes.

Thank God we seem to have finally grown out of
those bleak, dark New Zealand films that Neill labelled the cinema of unease.

As Ricky, the funny but troubled Maori kid whom Neill’s
character is reluctantly saddled with, Julian Dennison is the star. But Neill anchors
the film, even if his portrayal of the cantankerous Hec lapses slightly at
times.

Neill is our one true international A-list actor. It says a
lot about him that he still spends much of his time in New Zealand and gets
obvious pleasure from old-style, seat-of-the-pants Kiwi filmmaking.

Good on him. He seems a genuinely nice man - the sort of A-lister we're happy to claim as one of us.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

A bill proposing the abolition of charter schools has been drawn in the parliamentary ballot. It's in the name of Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins.

My friend Neil Harrap was inspired to write the following letter to Hipkins, which I endorse:

"Dear MP Hipkins,

"You're proving to be a disappointment in trying to stop
charter schools. Had charter schools been around when I was a kid I'd
have been a candidate.

"My experience of state schools was how mediocre
they can be in many cases. Career teachers waiting for retirement were
the norm in my school.

"Fortunately I have succeeded beyond my dreams, thanks to
parental guidance, a strong will to succeed and some good luck. Leaving
school at fifteen isn't the best way but if school is that much of a waste of
time then one is better out of it.

"You can google me and find that I've succeeded in many
fields, become wealthy and helped many people in their lives. This is not
because of public education but in spite of it.

"

You should be ashamed of yourself trying to stop diversity
in education. It shows the narrowness of your mind and your political
beliefs."

Amen to all that. Of course the idea of charter schools challenges the Labour Party's cherished dogma that only the state can do things properly and that people are too stupid to be trusted to exercise freedom of choice. Besides, charter schools potentially undermine the power of the teacher unions to which many Labour MPs previously belonged.

I understand, incidentally, that Hipkins has never bothered to visit one of these schools that he's so keen to ban. Perhaps he's scared he'll see something that might cause him to question his comfortable left-wing convictions.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Halley’s Comet visits more often than I agree with Sue
Bradford, but she’s right to object to the indecent haste with which the TPPA is
being pushed through Parliament.

Given the controversy over the trade agreement and the lack
of public disclosure when it was being negotiated, I thought the limited time
allowed for people to make submissions was bad enough.

After all, this is a document that runs to 6000 pages and
was seven years in the making. Even if you accept arguments about the need for secrecy
while it was under negotiation, people deserved time to digest its complex contents
once the wraps were off. That they were expected to prepare their submissions
even while the government’s explanatory road show was still touring the
country just didn’t seem fair.

Now National has abbreviated the process further by giving Parliament’s
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee only five days – reduced from
one month – in which to produce a report from the hundreds of submissions made.
The National-dominated committee will be writing its report even as submissions
are still being heard.

Appearances are important, and this just looks completely wrong.
It makes a mockery of due process and will only confirm, in the minds of
opponents, that the TPPA doesn’t stand up to critical scrutiny.

More to the point, it will have the effect of making people
who are neutral on the issue – and there are plenty of them – begin to suspect
that the government really is being dodgy and evasive.

On Morning Report
this morning, Steve Hoadley of Auckland University, while criticising the
haste, suggested people’s minds were probably pretty well made up already over
the TPPA. I disagree. I think a lot of New Zealanders remain undecided on the benefits
of the agreement and were counting on open and honest parliamentary scrutiny
and debate before coming to any firm conclusion. They are entitled to expect
that much.

If National wanted to give the impression it really wasn’t
interested in giving the public a proper say on the TPPA, it couldn’t have done
a better job. It seems to be saying, “We’ll push this through because we can.
We have the numbers. Nyah nyah nyah.” This is the type of third-term arrogance
that gets governments tipped out of office.

I’m very grateful to the man
who runs my local movie theatre. Let me tell you why.

A couple of weeks ago I went
to a film called Room. Until about
two minutes before it started, I was the only person in the theatre. Then two
couples arrived.

This was not a new experience
for me. Years ago I made the mistake of going to see a British film solely
because the American directors Joel and Ethan Coen were involved as executive producers.

I reasoned that any film with
the Coens’ names in the credits must be worth seeing, but it turned out to be
an utter stinker; a film so bad that I’ve forgotten the title.

There was only one other person
in the theatre – a man I knew, as it happened – and he left in disgust about 20
minutes before the end.

I stayed on, almost convinced
that the Coen brothers were playing one of their tricks and that something
would suddenly happen to justify the preceding 100 minutes of tedium. Alas,
nothing did.

It remains one of the most
pointless films I’ve seen. I soon forgave the Coens, although I sometimes still
wonder whether they were having a laugh at the audience’s expense.

But I digress. The reason I’m
grateful to the man who runs my local movie theatre is that he keeps showing
films that he must know will appeal only to a minority audience.

There’s not a huge demand for
arty films in the provincial town where I live, but it’s surprising how many turn
up on our local screen. The theatre owner obviously depends on crowd-pleasing commercial
films for his profits, but he always has something alternative up his sleeve
for those who aren’t interested in the 37th Batman movie.

Room was a
case in point. It’s a Canadian production (although set in the US state of
Ohio) about a woman who has been abducted and kept for seven years as a sex
slave in a locked, soundproofed room, during which time she has given birth to
a son.

I won’t give too much away,
other than to say it’s not quite as harrowing as it might sound. The
relationship between the mother and the boy is extraordinarily warm and
empathetic and the rapist is seen only briefly. In fact the most harrowing part
of the film isn’t where you expect it to be.

Had it been an American film,
I imagine Room might have been quite
different. American directors aren’t generally big on subtlety, but Canadian
films tend to be more understated – exactly the treatment Room needed.

I was pleased that Brie
Larsen, who played the mother, was honoured with the Academy Award for best
actress a few weeks ago. It was a rare case of an Oscar being richly deserved.

That brings me to the second
point of this column: namely, the sheer novelty of the Academy Award judges
actually getting something right. This year they did it not once, but twice.

The Oscar for best picture
went to Spotlight, an exemplary piece
of film-making about a Boston Globe
reporting team’s determination to expose serial sexual abuse by Catholic
priests.

It’s a no-nonsense, character-driven
film, refreshingly devoid of gimmickry and razzle-dazzle. The journalists at
the centre of the story are neither improbable heroes nor scumbags. I felt I
recognised them.

But it’s a sad story too,
because it reminds us that with the gutting of the newspaper industry (it’s set
in 2002, before the Internet brought carnage on the print media), an
institution vital to the functioning of an informed society has suffered huge
damage.

But if the Academy Awards
judges got those awards right, they reverted to type with some of the others.
They pandered to public and media sentiment by giving the Oscar for best actor
to Leonardo DiCaprio for his performance in the over-hyped 19th
century wilderness survival story, The
Revenant.

The Revenant
is spectacular to look at but pretty ordinary in every other respect.Emmanuel Lubezki certainly earned his Oscar
for the film’s breathtaking cinematography but neither DiCaprio nor the
director, Alejandro Inarritu, deserved theirs.

The problem with the Academy
Awards is that the judges are often swayed by extraneous factors. Industry
politics, media noise and pre-awards lobbying can be more decisive than quality or even
audience appeal.

In this case it was clear the
Hollywood establishment had decided it was DiCaprio’s turn to win, and it
scarcely mattered that his performance in The
Revenant was utterly unexceptional.

These factors help explain
why films that have won best-picture Oscars are sometimes not the ones that had a
lasting impact. In 1998, for instance, the winner was Shakespeare in Love. That was also the year of Saving Private Ryan. But which film do people remember today?

Next year, expect to see a
black actor take home a statuette. Given the uproar this year about blacks
being excluded from consideration, you can almost put money on it.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Protesters, eh? I’ve been one
myself, so I’m not entirely hostile to the idea of marching in the street and
waving banners. But sometimes protesters push their luck.

Consider what happened last
week in Wanganui, where a car driven by National MP Chester Borrows allegedly
drove over the foot of a woman protesting against the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement.

The car, in which cabinet
minister Paula Bennett was a passenger, was leaving a breakfast business
meeting. Video footage showed several protesters blocking its exit.

While it’s true that Borrows
appeared to make no attempt to stop, his car was moving so slowly that the
placard-wavers had plenty of time to get out of the way. It looked to me as if
they were either intent on provoking some sort of confrontation, or at the very least trying
to force him to stop.

Who’s at fault here?
Certainly Borrows could have pulled up. The protesters could then have
surrounded the car and harangued him and his VIP passenger at close range.

But equally, the protesters
had time to move and chose not to. If one of them was hurt as a result, then the
injury was surely self-inflicted.

I noticed too that the moment
the car came into contact with the protest group, a woman called out: “Did
anyone get that on camera?” It was almost as if they were willing it to happen
so they could then accuse Borrows of being a callous Tory thug.

Well, someone did get it on
camera, and most people who saw it on the TV news would have had no difficulty
deciding who was in the wrong.

There’s a classic clash of
rights here: the right to protest versus the right of people to go about their
lawful business unobstructed (or to use the classic phrase, “without let or
hindrance”).

Freedom of movement, like
freedom of speech, is a fundamental part of our rights. No one has the right to
impede it just to make a political point, no matter how righteous they feel
about their cause.

Borrows was exercising his right
and the protesters were trying to deprive him of it. The case rests.

The situation would have been
different had the MP provocatively accelerated into the protest group, but Borrows
is no hothead. He was barely driving at walking speed.

Now here’s the point. We live
in one of the world’s freest and most open societies. People are entitled to
shout and wave placards.

Protesters are indulged to
the extent that authorities routinely allow them to conduct street marches that
inconvenience other people.In much of
the world this would be unthinkable.

But protesters too often
interpret this tolerance as a general licence to disrupt, which is where they
get it wrong. Generally speaking, the right to protest ends at the point where
it obstructs the rights of others.

When protesters become so
pumped up with self-righteousness that they believe they’re entitled – indeed,
have a moral duty – to interfere with the rights of others, public sympathy for
their cause rapidly evaporates.

We’ve seen a lot of this
lately. The day before the Wanganui incident, Greenpeace protesters blocked
all the entrances to the SkyCity convention centre, where a petroleum industry
conference was underway. People were unable to get in or out.

Police took a lenient line,
as they almost invariably do, removing some protesters but apparently making no
arrests.

They were similarly indulgent
with the anti-TPPA Waitangi Day protester who hit cabinet minister Steven Joyce
with a flying dildo and inexplicably escaped prosecution for assault. Perhaps
the police were too busy processing dangerous spinsters who’d been intercepted
at checkpoints for having half a glass of sherry too many.

Then there were the
protesters dressed as clowns who invaded a public meeting held in Auckland to
explain the free trade agreement.

Never were protesters more
appropriately disguised. They were far more clownish than they realised,
noisily disrupting an event that was held to do exactly what the anti-TPPA camp
had been demanding: namely, to reveal more about details of the agreement.

Plainly, these buffoons
weren’t remotely interested in information or disclosure. They were getting off
on the adrenalin buzz of protesting.

But the gold standard of
protester arrogance remains the actions of the three men who sabotaged the
Waihopai electronic listening post in 2008, causing damage that taxpayers had
to pay for. The official estimate was $1.2 million.

The sanctimonious saboteurs
claimed to have Jesus Christ’s backing, although how they could be so sure of that
was never explained.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.